Sources:

[[1] Le Monde. (1997, October 31). Les divisions d’une équipe d’historiens du communisme. [https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.)

"Le Livre noir du communisme, ouvrage collectif d'une dizaine d'historiens doit marquer les esprits. « Une bible , expliquent l'éditeur Bernard Fixot et l'historien Stéphane Courtois, coordonnateur de l'ouvrage. Pour la première fois, en plus de huit cents pages, une dizaine de spécialistes dressent un bilan des victimes du communisme à travers le monde, qu'ils chiffrent à près de « cent millions de morts »." (n.p.) [The Black Book of Communism, a collective work by a dozen historians, must have made an impression. "A bible," explain the publisher Bernard Fixot and the historian Stéphane Courtois, coordinator of the book. For the first time, in more than eight hundred pages, a dozen specialists draw up an assessment of the victims of communism throughout the world, which they estimate at nearly "one hundred million dead]

[2] Le Monde. (1997, October 31). Les divisions d’une équipe d’historiens du communisme. [https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.)

"Jean-Louis Margolin et Nicolas Werth reprochent à Stéphane Courtois de considérer « la dimension criminelle comme l'une des dimensions propres à l'ensemble du système communiste », ainsi qu'il l'écrit dans son texte. « Cela revient à enlever son caractère historique au phénomène, affirme Jean-Louis Margolin…" (n.p.) [Jean-Louis Margolin and Nicolas Werth reproach Stéphane Courtois for considering "the criminal dimension as one of the dimensions specific to the entire communist system", as he writes in his text. "This amounts to depriving the phenomenon of its historical character," says Jean-Louis Margolin. (n.p.)]

[3] Maisano, C. (2025, January 15). The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History. Jacobin. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from [https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.](https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.)

"Some of the coauthors of the book were enraged by the preface Courtois had composed. Werth, who independently wrote nearly a third of the book, and Margolin, the author of over 160 pages on communism in East Asia, tried to retract their contributions altogether. They gave up only because their lawyers told them it was impossible. However, they immediately distanced themselves in public from both Courtois and the book.” (n.p.)

[4] Le Monde. (1997, October 31). Les divisions d’une équipe d’historiens du communisme. [https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/10/31/les-divisions-d-une-equipe-d-historiens-du-communisme_3811179_1819218.html.)

"Karel Bartosek a pour sa part démissionné du comité de rédaction de la revue Communisme que Stéphane Courtois a fondée avec Annie Kriegel, aujourd'hui disparue , à l'instar de Nicolas Werth." (n.p.) ["Karel Bartosek has resigned from the editorial board of the journal Communisme that Stéphane Courtois founded with Annie Kriegel, now deceased, like Nicolas Werth." (n.p.)]

[5] Maisano, C. (2025, January 15). The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History. Jacobin. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from [https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.](https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.)

"First, they accused the editor of being obsessed with arriving at a round figure of one hundred million dead that was factually incorrect. They pointed out that Courtois arbitrarily made up the figures of twenty million dead in the USSR and a million dead in Vietnam on his own, which neither of them had cited in their own chapters in the book" (n.p.)

[6] The Grayzone. (2017, November 22). US govt and media whitewash Nazi Holocaust citing debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’. [https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/.](https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/)

"While large numbers of people died under the watch of governments that identified as communist, this fake statistic includes the tens of millions of Soviets who died during Nazi Germany’s genocidal onslaught in World War II as supposed “victims of communism.”" (n.p.)

[7] The Grayzone. (2017, November 22). US govt and media whitewash Nazi Holocaust citing debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’. [https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/.](https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/)

"Perhaps more troubling than The Black Book of Communism’s many egregious errors is the fact that it counts Nazi–collaborating fascists, anti-Semitic White Army fighters, and czarist officers who oversaw genocidal pogroms against Jews in its list of “victims of communism.”" (n.p.)

[8] Maisano, C. (2025, January 15). The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History. Jacobin. Retrieved June 10, 2025, from [https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.](https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history.)

"The book’s treatment of communism in Latin America is so one-sided that it might as well be plucked from a US State Department report. We are given the total count of war victims in Sandinista Nicaragua, but we are not told that most of those deaths were caused by the US-funded contras, referred to here as the “anti-Sandinista resistance.”" (n.p.)

[9] The Grayzone. (2017, November 22). US govt and media whitewash Nazi Holocaust citing debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’. [https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/.](https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/)

"The number of people killed by governments identified as communist is still hotly debated in scholarly literature. There is frequently a double standard applied to Marxist-Leninist states that is not applied to capitalist ones: deaths from hunger, famine and other non-violent causes, even “lost births” that did not actually happen, are often attributed to communism..." (n.p.)

[10] Courtois, S., Werth, N., Panné, J.-L., Paczkowski, A., Bartošek, K., Margolin, J.-L., & Kramer, M. (Ed.). (1999). The black book of communism: Crimes, terror, repression (J. Murphy, Trans.). Harvard University Press.